Heritage advocate: What’s libelous about citing book errors?
Food heritage advocate and researcher John Sherwin Felix maintained there was nothing libelous about his public criticism of the many errors he found in a government-funded book on local cuisines, saying he was exercising his right to free expression when he pointed them out on social media.
“My defense is (that it was all) out of good faith. There was no malice,” Felix said in an interview with the Inquirer on Tuesday.
He said he had no “ill motive” toward the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), the agency that funded the book project, and toward the author Jose Antonio Miguel Melchor since “I don’t know them personally.”
“It’s our right to scrutinize the project as an expert, as a researcher, and of course as a taxpayer,” said Felix, the founder of Lokalpedia, an online platform focusing on Philippine food heritage and biodiversity.
“My criticism was not reckless,” he said, stressing that he immersed himself in local communities, consulted experts in the scientific community, and read numerous books about local food before making his critique.
Felix is facing a cyberlibel complaint over his posts about the book “Kayumanggi: A Kaleidoscope of Filipino Flavors and Food Traditions.’’
The posts cited what Felix called out as scientific, historical, and factual errors.
On Feb. 25, Melchor, the book’s author who also serves as a private sector representative in the DTI Malikhaing Pinoy Creative Council, sued Felix for cyberlibel at the Makati City prosecutor’s office.
‘So many mistakes’
Reached for comment on Tuesday, Melchor declined to speak at length about his complaint.
“At this time, I will be refraining from issuing any statements or participating in interviews,” Melchor said in a text message to the Inquirer.
Felix, who had tapped lawyers Arman Hernando and Henrie Enaje as counsels, expressed confidence that the complaint would be dismissed.
As a food heritage advocate and researcher, Felix said, he was eager to read Kayumanggi after receiving a copy from a friend in September last year.
In November, Kayumanggí was named Best Asian Food Culture Book in the World at the 2025 Gourmand Awards held in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
“As someone who, of course, reads a lot, I always notice errors; typographical, maybe one or two. But when I scanned through the pages of the book, there were so many mistakes,” Felix said.
On Sept. 17, Felix posted his findings on Lokalpedia’s Facebook page. He included photos of the pages where he spotted the errors, and also provided corrections that cited other publications and authors as sources.
On ‘tawilis,’ KBL, etc.
“On the page about tawilis, [the book said the fish] can be found in freshwater lakes and rivers in the Philippines, including Taal Lake. That’s an incorrect statement. Tawilis can only be found in Taal Lake,” Felix said in the Inquirer interview, citing an example.
The book also incorrectly claimed that tawilis only resembles sardines, when it is actually a species of sardines belonging to the genus Sardinella, he added.
In the section about the dish known as “KBL (Kadios, Baboy, Langka),” the book mistakenly lists batwan (Garcinia binucao) as a legume, suggesting that it belongs to the same family as mung beans, string beans, and pigeonpeas (Leguminosae).
Felix said this was also incorrect: “Kadyos is a legume, but batwan is not. That’s an incorrect classification. [The author’s] botanical information is wrong because batwan is a berry or a fruit that comes from a native tree.”
On page 136, the book said peanuts or peanut butter provide the yellow-orange color of the kare-kare dish. “Everyone who cooks and eats kare-kare knows that it actually comes from achuete,” he said.
“And there are still many errors. So the important point here is consultation—consultation with different ethno-linguistic groups and various communities,” he said. “As I said, the critical question to ask first is: what kind of consultation was done (for the book)? Did we hold meetings with the different communities?”
According to Felix, he emailed the DTI on Sept. 18, a day after he posted his comments online, detailing his issue with the book.
On Sept. 23, he forwarded his concerns also to officials of the Creative Industries Development Office, an attached agency of the DTI. He has yet to receive a reply as of Tuesday.
Public deserves explanation
After his posts in September, Felix again brought up the book online after it won an award in Riyadh.
“It’s honestly wild that a DTI-funded book on regional cuisines (a book riddled with errors, mind you, dozens of them) managed to win an award overseas. Heavens,” he said in a post on Dec. 2.
“What kind of world are we living in? I even sent them letters, yet they never responded. Not even a simple statement. So we can only assume they never recalled the books or corrected those mistakes,” he added.
In the interview, he said it was okay with him if the DTI would no longer answer him directly but the agency still owed the public “an explanation or [statement on] a clear course of action whether they will recall the book or not.’’
The libel complaint filed against him may also have a “chilling effect” on other researchers, journalists and ordinary citizens demanding accuracy in important publications.
“But every researcher or [member of the] academe should not be afraid to voice out their concerns because our culture and knowledge thrive in such exchanges. When you put yourself or your study out there, expect comments, expect reviews, expect criticism,” he said.
Some of his fellow researchers, civic organizations and even some restaurant chefs had given him moral support as he faced the complaint, Felix added.
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